Rethinking SA’s Energy

With CPS Energy building a new coal plant and being a likely partner in two new nuclear plants, these issues are going to continue to balloon in importance as the debate over global warming and air pollution heats up. The 12 column inches allotted for the story could not do justice to the lengthy list of recommendations. You can read them all here. But there’s a few more I’d like to highlight as food for thought.

Here are four more recommendations pulled directly from the report.

• Coordinate energy efficiency efforts with SAWS water conservation efforts. In many situations energy efficiency and water conservation are interrelated. When there are tradeoffs between them, CPS Energy should partner with SAWS to see that a good compromise is adopted. As an example, if cooling towers are promoted as an energy efficiency measure, the use of condensate water for landscape watering and other uses should be mandated.

• Provide ratepayers with additional conservation and comparison information on monthly CPS Energy bills and give them access on line to view their consumption data.

• Examine the use of a time-based tiered rate structure for residential and commercial electricity as a mechanism to reduce peak energy demand. A tiered electric usage structure encourages conservation. SAWS uses this approach locally with great success to decrease water consumption. Experience elsewhere has indicated that higher costs for high users will diminish electric demand as well. Portland, Oregon offers a time of use option, with residential charges of 10.686¢/kWh at peak load time, 6.204¢ at mid-peak, and 3.562¢ at off-peak. All Seattle, Washington residential customers are currently charged 3.76¢/kWh for the first 16KWh per day, (or 10 kWh/day, depending on season), and 7.93¢/kWh for each additional kWh per day. The average 2007/2008 rate in Seattle is 5.63¢. A reduced low-income rate is offered. CPS Energy charges residential customers 6.275¢/kWh, regardless of time of day or extent of usage.

• Support a greatly expanded reforestation of San Antonio. CPS Energy in conjunction with the city of San Antonio and other area cities, should engage in the planting and early maintenance of trees in city-owned areas in addition to its tree-giveaway program. CPS Energy’s goal should be to plant up to 2 million trees in the San Antonio metropolitan area by 2015. CPS Energy should promote the energy saving, air cleaning/cooling benefits of trees in its advertising and examine its own policies about removing trees. The Sacramento Municipal Utility District has planted over 400,000 trees since the inception of its tree giveaway program in 1990.

CPS Energy, as reported in today’s story, will spend $96 million on conservation initiatives over the next four years. That number balloons to $242 million through 2014 when counting both conservation initiatives and what CPS official Bruce Evans calls “demand response.”

This boils down to a program of charging more for power during high demand times (when it’s real hot) and less during low demand times (when it’s not so hot). Such a program will require a massive upgrade in the utility’s metering system. It will probably be five years before that is on line.